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Books about "early" women boaters


Chev

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I seem to remember somewhere in one of Pearson's guide books him mentioning a number of books from (i think) the first few decades of the 20th century by women describing their experiences of boating, and I want to get one for my wife for her birthday... but can I find the reference....?! If anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd be grateful. Cheers

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Ooh - I've found a list online - for info, in case anyone else is interested:

 

Maiden’s Trip by Emma Smith

Idle Women by Susan Woolfitt

The Amateur Boatwomen by Eily Gayford

Troubled Waters by Margaret Cornish

 

If people know of others, please add

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Whilst not exactly a story of all the events in one families lifetime, it is a collection of actual events that were experienced by boating families woven together in a book by Shiela Stewart entitled 'Ramlin Rose' - The Boatwoman's Story, covering the life afloat from 1900 to the late fifties. Another is by Pat Warner entitled 'A Lock Keeper's Daughter, a Worcestershire Canal Childhood, telling of her life beside the canal on the Tardebigge flight.

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It depends on what you define as "early."

 

Whilst not strictly "early" there is this book.
The lifestyle of the boat people actually changed little over the years.
One major change around the mid 1800's was when the boat people abandoned their land homes to live on board due to financial pressures caused by the railways.

 

Women and Children of the Cut by Wendy Freer (goodreads.com)

 

Women and Children of the Cut

Edited by Ray T
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7 hours ago, Chev said:

Ooh - I've found a list online - for info, in case anyone else is interested:

 

Maiden’s Trip by Emma Smith

Idle Women by Susan Woolfitt

The Amateur Boatwomen by Eily Gayford

Troubled Waters by Margaret Cornish

 

If people know of others, please add

Can recommend Troubled Waters. Very readable, about the young women recruited to crew canal boats during WW2.

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8 hours ago, Chev said:

Ooh - I've found a list online - for info, in case anyone else is interested:

 

Maiden’s Trip by Emma Smith

Idle Women by Susan Woolfitt

The Amateur Boatwomen by Eily Gayford

Troubled Waters by Margaret Cornish

 

If people know of others, please add

 

Maiden's Trip is fiction, (though based on fact).

The  other three are non-fiction, (other than when the author's memory deviates considerably from fact!).


I would say Idle Women is the best.  The Amateur Boatwomen is a rather bland read, with little substance.

 

In Troubled Waters, Margaret Cornish comes over as a fairly embittered woman, leaving it hard for you to understand why she stuck in role.

 

(All in my opinion, only, of course)

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Rambling Rose although fiction is based on the lives of 2 boatladies called Rose both of whom I had the honor of knowing. It depicts their lives well and is a good read. The other books in the list are about ladies working boats during WW2 as their contribution towards the war effort as some boatmen had joined the forces.

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Most of these titles are out of print. The Canal Bookshop probably have them at reasoanble prices, or you could pay through the nose from your favorite online tat bazaar. A full set of the "Working Waterways" series would cover all the wartime titles, plus some others.

Edited by Martin Nicholas
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1 hour ago, Dav and Pen said:

Rambling Rose although fiction is based on the lives of 2 boatladies called Rose both of whom I had the honor of knowing. It depicts their lives well and is a good read. The other books in the list are about ladies working boats during WW2 as their contribution towards the war effort as some boatmen had joined the forces.


my knowledge of boating history is scant, but I tend to agree Rambling Rose is the better read (from what I can remember). 


Idle Women is a must read if you want an understanding of the work/role some women chose during the war. 





 

 

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The only book I know that matches @Chev’s description is Ramlin Rose.

 

It is also probably the best narrative on the realities of those people for whom boating was their life.

 

The Working Waterways series are snap shots from a time when the author concerned chose to make boating what they did at that time.

 

Ramlin Rose and Maiden’s Trip have the advantage of being authored by someone who was a writer. Interestingly both are also composite stories based on real people and events rather than direct first hand accounts.

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The "Working Waterways" titles can be obtained from https://www.canalbookshop.co.uk/history-tradition/boatmen-boaters.html   "Ramlin Rose" was discontinued by its publisher OUP seven years ago, so you will need to find a secondhand copy.  We don't have one at CanalBookShop, so try abebooks.co.uk or Amazon (same thing really, Amazon owns Abe Books).  "Women and Children of the Cut" is also long out of print, and again none at CanalBookShop - so try the other websites mentioned.

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Whilst it is accurate to say that Ramlin Rose and Maidens' Trip were written by authors,, in the case of Emma Smith, this was her first attempt as an author, for which she won  the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for 1949. She went on to write several other books and short stories for both adults and children and her autobiographies 'Great Western Beach' and 'As Green as Grass' record her early life. Emma, (as Elspeth Hallsmith) was an early Trainee on the Grand Union Scheme so she did have first hand experience of what she was writing about in Maidens' Trip and although a composite story, the events all happened, albeit to a succession of young women, working with Elspeth as their Trainer. Even Wilf is based on a real person (who went onto marry One of the protagonists in real life,) existed.

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  • 1 month later...

Two Girls on a Barge by V Cecil Cotes, published by D Appleton, New York in 1891 is an account of a voyage in a boat converted to residential use (sort of) by two rather upper class girls (barge furnished with Liberty fabric for example).   I don't know whether it is fictional or factual, or somewhere or other on the scale between!    The text is written in the first person by one of the girls, by which I mean the author uses "I", but I don't know if it really happened something as the book describes.   Cecil is an unusual girl's name so it may be autobiographical.

 

The book is available on Amazon as a reprint.   My reprint is from an edition originally held by Boston Public Library.    

 

 

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